“Go away and let me suffer in peace,” I growled, splashing muddy water at him.

He flinched, and frowned, but it was a reflex action; the water that struck his pants vanished without a trace.

I blinked, and splashed at him again, this time spattering a double handful of dirty water across his legs.

“Are you angry, or just making a fashion statement?” he asked.

I felt a little chill. No spot of mud nor mark of moisture could be seen on the perfectly pressed khakis. “How did you do that?” I asked.

He just smiled and said, “Do you want your three wishes or not, Vincent?”

I climbed out of the puddle. “What’s going on here?” I asked.

He made a tsking sound. “I think it’s pretty obvious,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Come on, let’s go get a cup of coffee and talk. All your questions will be answered in good time.”

The first question I thought of was “How much trouble is it going to give me to be seen with this guy?” With Butch and his crowd already calling me “faggot” and “fruit,” walking around with a guy who moved the way Melvin did wasn’t going to do anything to improve the situation.

The first question I actually asked was, “Do you have to walk like that?”

“Like what?”

“You know,” I said, blushing a little. “So swishy.”

Melvin stopped. “Honey, I gave my life to be able to walk like this. Don’t you dare try to stop me now.”

“Don’t call me honey!” I snapped.

He sighed and rolled his eyes toward the sky. “I can’t say you didn’t warn me,” he said, clearly not speaking to me.

We went to a little café on Morton Street called Pete’s. It’s mostly frequented by kids from the university, but some of the high school kids hang out there as well, especially kids from the theater group.

“Not bad,” said Melvin, as we entered. “Brings back memories.”

Things were slow, and we found a corner table where we could talk in private.

“Okay,” I said, “what’s going on?”

I won’t relate the first part of the conversation, because you’ve probably read a lot of things like it before. I couldn’t believe what he was saying was real, so I kept trying to figure out what this was really about—Candid Camera, an elaborate practical joke, that kind of thing. But after he instantly dried my puddle-soaked pants by snapping his fingers, I had to accept it: Whether or not he was actually my fairy godfather, this guy was doing real magic left and right.

“Okay, if you’re real,” I said, lifting my coffee (which had changed from plain coffee to Swiss double mocha while I was drinking it), “then tell me how come I never heard of fairy godfathers before.”

“Because I’m the first.”

“Care to explain that?”